ABOUT US

Steve Friess is a 2011-12 recipient of the prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he will be studying the impact of the rapid expansion of Vegas-style gaming on Asia. He's a podcaster, author and Vegas-based freelance journalist who writes regularly for USA Today, The New York Times, Newsweek and many others. His column, "The Strip Sense" appears every Thursday in the Las Vegas Weekly. His books include "Gay Vegas" from Huntington Press and Knopf Mapguides' "Las Vegas."Friess co-hosts the weekly celebrity interview podcast The Strip Podcast "The Strip" with his husband, Miles Smith, the executive producer at KSNV-TV, Channel 3. For four years, Steve also co-hosted The Petcast with Las Vegas Sun education scribe Emily Richmond.

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Monday, April 25, 2011

Some of you expect me to blast back at disgraced former Review-Journal publisher Sherman Frederick after a desperate-for-attention post -- yes, he still blogs, who knew? -- in which he finds fault in both the Las Vegas Sun's multiple award-winning series on Vegas health-care problems and me for being in position to cover that paper's possible second Pulitzer in three years. I did toss off a few quick replies via Twitter, but I'm otherwise going to abstain. Frederick is a sad, infirm, irrelevant man whose tenure at the helm of Nevada's largest newspaper will be remembered for:

(a) Catty, juvenile, occasionally off-colored feuds with competitors and political adversaries(b) A disastrous inability to capitalize in circulation numbers on one of America's most intense population booms in history(c) A failure to comprehend or embrace new media in a meaningful or convenient way, thereby placing his entire enterprise in grave jeopardy(d) Some of the most foolish and now demonstrably inaccurate political commentary of our age(e) Having, through a completely inappropriate and obsessive jeremiad, undermined the credibility of several fine and hard-working reporters attempting to cover the most important Senate race in state history(f) This somnolent, mumbling, coffee-cup-fondling moment of greatest glory, a Fox News appearance:

and

(g) Having his inaccuracies vivisected on national TV and later being so tone-deaf as to be proud of this:

Honestly, that blog doesn't deserve a response, except for this: The Sun has won a Pulitzer and been the finalist for another in three years. When was the last time the R-J won a Pulitzer or been a finalist for one? Never. Enough said.

Everyone knows why Sherm was removed from the R-J, for rants like this (usually against Reid)

But I ask Steve -- anyone, really -- doesn't Frederick have a point when he says the Sun has ceased being a real newspaper, threw all their resources into one project a year and hopes to win an award?

I read the Do No Harm series, and it doesn't compare to the Chicago Sun Times piece that won. If you've read it, I bet you'd agree. That was stellar journalism. The Sun's series just felt "fake," as if they were writing one long cover letter to the Pulitzer board. Just IMO

THE STRIP FINALE

Below are links to the final episodes and last week of special editions of The Strip Podcast. Right-click on any of these to save and hear at your leisure. Otherwise, click on them and they should play. Enjoy, and thanks for the wonderful years.